Let’s go back to the beginning of the story you’re telling in this book. If one were trying to describe it in a slightly old-fashioned idiom, you might say that this is a book about the origins of the Second World War. Would it be at all accurate to describe it in that way? I think that’d be a bit of a shortcut. It’s [about] why Europe plunged into a double catastrophe in the first half of the 20th century, and how it then started to emerge from that double catastrophe to bring about, unexpectedly and in a short space of time, the beginnings of decades of peace and prosperity. In the introduction to this book you identify four interlocking factors which led to the “self-destruction of Europe”: ethno-nationalist conflict; territorial conflict, fomented, presumably, by the shortcomings of the Treaty of Versailles; class conflict stimulated by the Russian Revolution; and the crisis of capitalism. Which of those do you think contributed most to the outbreak of war in 1939, or do you think that, by themselves, they were necessary but not sufficient for the conflagration? Each of them individually was a necessary component but insufficient on their own to cause the catastrophic destruction that ensued in the Second World War. Each of those factors was present in an extreme way in Germany [between the two World Wars], and bundled together they provide the explosion. Does the traditional idea of a “German problem” or “German question” in Europe have any explanatory force here? When you try to explain complex developments, some of these shortcut arguments are not wrong, they’re just insufficient. To say that something like the “German problem” is the reason we had two world wars really won’t do. But Germany is at the centre of events. And for that matter, even in the second half of the century, if you look at what happens after the war—the Cold War, the economic miracle, then the end of the Cold War—Germany is somehow central to everything that happens. You have a chapter entitled “Hell on Earth” which deals with the war itself and the Holocaust. You say there that securing food for Germany’s population was the imperative that was driving its war aims. Timothy Snyder, in his recent book Black Earth, argued that one could also understand the Final Solution in terms of ecological panic. Would you go that far? Economic arguments, including the quest for land and food, are obviously part of this onslaught on Eastern Europe. The Jews, though, were a small number, six million or so, out of the whole population of Eastern Europe. In 1941, the “general plan” for the east spoke about transplanting 30m people from that area over the next 25 years. That is more closely connected to the securing of land and wealth than the destruction of the Jews. [Snyder’s] argument, therefore, is putting the cart before the horse. In Hitler’s own thinking, vicious, lethal and exterminatory anti-Semitism comes first. You find that in his speeches in the very early 1920s. The Lebensraum stuff comes in later on. How does Hitler’s prosecution of the war dovetail with the Final Solution? You point out that the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 turns genocidal almost from the start. At the beginning, from the very day they entered the Soviet Union, German security police were killing large number of Jews—mainly male Jews, initially. The next step came in late July and August [of 1941], when they then started [killing] women and children as well. That was a major step up only a few weeks after they’d begun Operation Barbarossa. It becomes wholesale extermination relatively quickly. How does it dovetail [with the conventional war effort]? As the plans for [the invasion of] Russia were building up, the idea was then to send them to inhospitable parts of the Soviet Union. But once the war stalls, they can’t do that either, so [you ultimately] get the notion of death camps in Poland. At the end of the introduction, you make the very important point that while the Second World War outdid the First in moral squalor and the sheer scale of the slaughter, it nevertheless paved the way for the extraordinary rebirth of western Europe, at least, after the War. So one of the things this book is trying to do is to work out how that was possible. I started out with this complicated double question. First how was it possible to plunge into this level of catastrophe? Second, how and why did Europe begin on the route out of this? The second volume will take that on and will probably end on an equivocal note. Ian Kershaw’s “To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949” is published by Allen Lane (£30)

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Comments

Anthony St. John

December 31, 2015 at 16:36

31 December MMXV
Why I Must Be King of Europe
I am the best choice to be King of Europe. And I'm not joshing with you, my dear reader. By now, if you still have not realized, the Europeans—all 500,000,000 of them!—have forfeited any responsible claim to be intelligent enough and inclined indeed to join in, in a spirit of fraternized, concerted effort, to attempt to salvage themselves from the brutal economic and political climate in which the world is now embroiled. Could there be promise to think that Europeans might be so bright as to enjoy their own company and progress to a higher quality of life for the benefit of themselves and those with whom they trade and communicate? Are they just too dense? Too snotty? Have they ensconced themselves in a shell of snobbery—the sanctuary of those fully frustrated?
I now step forward...
You must understand that for millennia Europeans have been brained-washed into submitting themselves to some sort of overseer whether it be a pope, a bishop, a king, a queen, a prince, a princess, a dictator, a general, a padrone, an organized crime honcho, a mafia boss, a megalomaniac and—even in Italy—a Silvio Berlusconi! Just as sheep follow their shepherd or sheepdog, Europeans must have, at their beck and call, some authoritative figure to whom they donate their allegiance and blindfoldedly accept the guru's power to influence or command their thought, opinion and behavior. This obsequiousness is in the sinews of the European peoples, and without some magnificent nominal head to whom all Europeans might pay homage, there is slim possibility for Western Civilization I to integrate and join forces to, together, rescue itself from an eventual decline.
It is for these reasons that I volunteer to be King of Europe. I want to deliver this undignified enormous division of land and its populace, on the globe, from undoing its very self. I want to unify 500,000,000 individuals so that they might constitute a force of progress, innovation and creation—something even FB is not capable of effectuating. I would like to gift Europeans with the joy of aspiration and extricate them from their mental depression, their never-ending hopelessness. I will endeavor to persuade them to stop wearing DEPRESSED STRESSED ELEGANTLY DRESSED and I ♥ CORRUPTION tee shirts—just to begin.
At this point, you probably are trying to understand why I think I am qualified to assume the role of King of Europe. Let me put your mind at rest. I was born in Brooklyn, New York, North America. The father of my mother had been born in the Prussian part of France. His wife had been born in Ireland. The father and mother of my father had been born in the Old Soviet Union. If you draw a line from Ireland to France and then to the eastern part of the Confederation of Russia, you will see that my line of descent is overwhelmingly integrated. No Italian, no Frenchperson, no German, no Russian, no Irishperson...no member of the European Union enjoys such a diversity of cultures and groupings. (I also lived in Venezuela for almost seven years.) What is more, I have been a resident of Italy since 1 May 1983—quite a considerable measure of time. While I am not a native-born Italian—without any Italian bloodline—I am willing to contact the Italian Red Cross and ask them to infuse my circulation system with Italian stock. This procedure will further enhance my royal curriculum vitae. A line drawn from Ireland, to France, to Italy and then to eastern Russia, will enlarge my European family tree and give additional leverage to my pressing claim to ascend the European throne and rule over my European Kingdom for the benefit of the 500,000,000 European subjects who will pay homage to me and what I intend to accomplish for them.
My first act as King of Europe will be to carve up my Kingdom into Quasi-Sovereign Body Politics. The Kingpins of these regions will prepare a Kingdom Report for me each month detailing the state of their domains as they regard the social, economic and political realities of their respective responsibilities. An annual Kingdom Assembly will be convoked.
It is understood that the European condition is desperate. Good, Royal sense is the order of the day. If forces contrary to my wishes, for example, financial institutions, politicians and their bedfellows, journalists, pose a threat to the stability of the Kingdom, they will be post haste condemned to reflection cells for a time—trusting that they will alter their opinions—in the appropriate Royal Dungeons. (Anything is better than head choppings-off.)
My Distinguished Subjects, I terminate this my appeal to assume the throne and serve as King of Europe with this admonition: I leave it to you to decide whether or not I have the mettle and mental capacity to govern the people of the Kingdom of Europe; and, I assert that I am a sincere, honest, thrifty (no horseshit in the streets, no carriages, no missiles) individual with a sense of humor that helps other people enjoy themselves; further, it is my overwhelming desire to bring the Kingdom of Europe from being a cove for the propagation of malfeasance and injustice to being, for the world, a focal point of creation and progress.
Your Royal Highness...
ASJ the First
Authored by ASJ
6 July MMXIII
Calenzano, Italy
* * *

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